by Lori L. Lake
Jaylynn knew enough about post-traumatic stress disorder to realize she could have a full-blown case of it if she didn’t deal with the events of the last few hours. It was all she could think of on the plane and in the taxi on the way to her parents’ house as she fidgeted and fought back tears. Late Monday afternoon, she arrived at long last on her parents’ doorstep, unannounced, and Erin and Amanda nearly flipped with excitement. The girls had been home from summer school daycare for a short while, and Dave and Janet Lindstrom were in the kitchen getting ready to prepare dinner.
Jaylynn’s mother took only seconds to discern something was wrong, and after the girls finished jumping all over their big sister, Janet led her daughter upstairs to the master bedroom. As soon as the door was shut, Jaylynn collapsed on her parents’ unmade bed and burst into tears.
“What’s the matter?” her mother asked in a voice tinged with desperation.
“I can’t believe this. I—I—Mom, oh my God. I killed a man.”
“What!” Janet sat next to her daughter and wrapped her in her arms. After a tap on the door, Dave stepped inside, shutting the door behind him.
“Janet?” he asked, glancing between the two women. They looked at one another helplessly as Jaylynn, doubled over with grief, sobbed.
Dave sat down on the other side of his stepdaughter. “Jaylynn—Lynnie, honey. Jay! Stop! Stop right now. Look at me.” In response, Jaylynn slowly sat up and turned tear-filled eyes toward him. “What happened?” he asked. “Start at the beginning and tell your mother and me.”
They sat on either side of her, shocked, and listened and held her as she cried.
And so began the process of grieving.
Dez sat at Luella’s dining room table and watched her putter around and water the plants on the windowsills. The three large windows facing the front yard contained a total of ten plants, five of which were violets. Dez wasn’t sure what the other leafy ones were. She leaned back in the squeaky chair cautiously. Her ribs still hurt when she moved, but the ache was dull and nothing like the sharp pain she got for the first forty-eight hours.
“You’re gloomy today, Dez.” Luella took a tiny trowel, no bigger than a fork, and tilled up a bit of the dirt around the African violet in one pot. She filled in some potting soil from a green beans can.
Dez moved to cross her arms, as she had a hundred times since the shooting, and was reminded most painfully how much it hurt to do that. She let her hands drop into her lap.
Luella paused and Dez felt her gaze. She met the brown eyes and listened as Luella said, “You ever notice how plants like to sit right next to each other? They don’t like loneliness any more than most people do.” She waved a wrinkled hand toward two potted violets next to one another. One was a deep, rich purple—the color of royalty. The other was pale lavender with dark purple trim. Despite the gray weather outdoors, both plants were thriving inside. “Look at how these two are all over each other.”
Dez craned her neck. “Whaddya mean?”
“Look. They’re reaching out to touch each other.”
“Looks to me like they’re growing toward the light the window lets in.”
“They are. But they’re also inclining toward each other. See?”
Dez heaved herself up out of the chair and moved to stand over the plants and next to Luella. She felt old today, old and defeated. The late afternoon sun tried to fight through the clouds, but was failing miserably, so the day was dark and dreary with little chance of change before nightfall. Dez examined the two plants as a tentative hand reached around her middle and a silver head leaned against her upper arm.
“What’s the matter, Squirt?”
“Don’t know. I just feel like shit.”
“Want me to make you something to eat?”
“No thanks, Luella.” She sighed. “You shouldn’t have to take care of me. I’m a grown woman.”
“I like taking care of you.”
“You’re a generous person, but you shouldn’t always have to give, give, give. Makes me feel selfish.”
“You do a lot for this old woman, Dez.”
“Not half what you do for me,” she said in a cranky tone. “It’s not fair to you.”
Luella bubbled with laughter. “Girl, you may be a grown woman, but you’re still a babe in the woods.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are. You don’t fool me.” Luella looked up at her, kind eyes appraising the pale face. “And you still don’t get it. Sometimes accepting help from others is actually a gift to them—not to you. I don’t do one thing for you that I don’t want to. What I do makes me feel good.” Shifting around to face her, Luella put one hand on each of Dez’s hips. Looking up and into Dez’s eyes, she said, “I love you like you were my own kid. I don’t want you in pain. I want you to be happy. That’s all. Makes me feel good any time I can contribute to that.”
Tears sprang to Dez’s eyes, and she tried to pull away. Luella’s eyes narrowed and she tightened her grip on Dez’s hips. “Don’t you go shutting me out. We’ve come through too much now for that.” She reached around Dez, dragged a chair closer, and pressed her into it. She slid another chair over and lowered herself until she was knee to knee with her. She took Dez’s hands into her own. “I’m not going anywhere until you ’fess up and tell me what’s troubling you.”
Dez looked out the window, her teeth clamped together so hard that her jaw hurt. She felt the soft hands squeezing her fingers and turned stubborn eyes toward Luella. “I’m worried about Jaylynn.”
Luella leaned forward, put her elbows on her knees, and kept hold of Dez’s hands. “She’s a resourceful girl. She knows how to take care of herself. She’ll be okay.”
“What if she’s not?”
“Why wouldn’t she be?” Luella asked softly.
“I don’t know,” Dez said, her voice bitter and ragged. She turned away to stare out the window.
“I’ve got a hunch here. Let me tell you what I think.” Luella paused a moment and took hold of Dez’s chin to redirect her face. “Look at me, Desiree Reilly. It’s not your fault some loony-tune decided to rob and shoot up the 7-Eleven. There’s nothing you could have done. It’s not your fault.”
“But it shouldn’t have happened that way!” Dez said emphatically which caused her side to rip with pain.
“Why? What could you have done?”
She groaned. “I should have seen it coming faster. I wasn’t—I didn’t pay close enough attention.” The words came out in a rush. “He should never have got a shot off. I should have reacted quicker, taken control—”
“And then you wouldn’t have been wounded, huh?” Luella had a sly look on her face. She peered intently into Dez’s eyes, and Dez had the urge to get up and run.
“It wasn’t that so much. I don’t care about that.”
“Ah, I see then. You think you should have shot that idiot. The fact that Jaylynn did it, that she’s upset, that she’s gone—it’s all your fault, right? You’re afraid she’s blaming you. Is that it?”
Dez refused to answer and stared daggers at Luella. She felt a swell of anger rise in her and said the first thing that came to her mind. “Why in the hell did you call my mother?”
Luella let go of Dez’s hands and pursed her lips into a tiny smile. “She’s your mother, Dez. She needed to know her child was hurt.”
“I have you on the call list because I don’t want her to know things about me. And then you go and call her and don’t even come to the hospital yourself.”
“What?” Luella looked startled for a moment, then she shook her head. “You must’ve been out of your mind on the drugs, girl, because I was there. I got there fast as I could.”
Now Dez was surprised. “I don’t remember that,” she said indignantly.
“I’m telling you the truth. I was there, and I know exactly how Jaylynn was feeling. She wasn’t a bit concerned about herself. She was worried half to death about you!”
“If she was
so worried about me, why didn’t she say goodbye?” Dez struggled unsuccessfully to keep the bitter tone out of her voice.
Luella shook her head slowly and patted Dez’s knee with one hand. With a long sigh, she rose. Picking up the tiny trowel she moved back over to the windowsill. “You two are both exactly like these plants here. Both of you pretend to be straining toward the sun while you’re really leaning toward each other and spying out of the corners of your eyes. But you watch—those plants sit there long enough and they’ll be entwined, just like you two. I know you can’t see it right now, but wait and see. You mark my words.”
Dez sat silently for a moment, fighting with herself. She thought about her source of strength, which she’d always believed was her ability to stay cool and keep down any troublesome emotions. But now every single thing she did, everything that happened, served to unblock carefully constructed walls and fences. Her feelings ran amok, and nothing she did or thought stopped it. Perhaps she shouldn’t have dammed things off so effectively—perhaps she was denying herself the opportunity to learn how to control the maelstrom of emotions threatening to unnerve her now.
She listened to a tuneless song Luella was humming under her breath as she pinched an old leaf off one of the non-flowering plants. Without any further consideration, Dez rose and wrapped her arms around Luella from behind, surprising her. Luella twisted in her arms and returned the hug, causing Dez to groan.
“Oh, sweetie, I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to squeeze.”
“That’s okay. I deserved it for being rotten.”
“Oh, yeah, you’re rotten. Rotten through and through.” She chuckled. “That’s why I keep you around, ’cause you’re such a rotten kid.”
Jaylynn borrowed her mother’s Bonneville and took the short drive around Green Lake to the apartments where her aunt lived. After forty-eight hours with two inquisitive girls and a pair of sympathetic parents, she was feeling less out of control. But she recognized she still slipped in and out of periods of numbness.
At least she was better rested now. When she first arrived, she was so exhausted she hadn’t been able to think clearly, and who cared since no one in the household ever went to bed early. Besides, her body was on Minnesota time, which was two hours later than West Coast time. It took her a whole day to get reacquainted with the noises in the old house and with the racket her sisters put up. A night in her old double bed with two little girls, warm as twin toaster ovens, did a lot to revive her. Last night the girls each snuck into bed with her again, but once they went to sleep, she crept away and slept in the twin bed in Erin’s room. She hadn’t slept well, but she’d stayed in bed from ten p.m. until nearly nine a.m., so she figured that in between waking from the bad dreams, she probably slept six or seven hours, and she didn’t feel too terribly tired. She hoped tonight would be better.
In the five years she’d been living in Minnesota, the traffic in Seattle had gone from terrible to disastrous. The six-mile trip from the Ballard area to the far side of Green Lake used to take fifteen minutes at most. Today it took so long that her bare legs were stuck to the seat with sweat by the time she drove into Auntie Lynn’s neighborhood. The drive also gave her time to remember wisps of a dream in which she and Dez, running hand in hand, were being chased by phantom aliens. Suddenly, the ground dropped from beneath Dez. Her hand was wrenched from Jaylynn’s, and she disappeared into a gaping hole. Frantically, Jaylynn tried reaching into the hole for her, but all she heard was screaming and gnashing of teeth. The monster appeared again with gleaming jaws dripping blood and emitting deafening shrieks. The dream had made her scream until her mother came in to awaken her.
Great. A new version of the horrible dreams. Just what I needed. She shuddered and decided to try very hard not to think of it anymore.
Jaylynn stepped on the gas, maneuvered up her aunt’s street, and arrived at the complex a few minutes after noon. The nightmare came to mind once more while she waited for her aunt to buzz her in to the security apartments, and she resolved not to think of it again. Walking down the long hallway to unit 108, she concentrated on her surroundings. She felt the same thick carpet underfoot, smelled the same air conditioned eucalyptus scent she’d always noticed. Some things might change, but Auntie Lynn isn’t one of them, of that she was sure. It gave her a feeling of security knowing her aunt was always there.
Jaylynn’s father’s younger sister, Lynn Savage, opened the apartment door and engulfed her in a bone-crushing hug. Though very nearly Jaylynn’s height, she seemed shorter, and she was totally the opposite in looks. Long curly dark hair framed a mischievous face often lit up with a smile. While Jaylynn was shapely, her aunt was rail thin. Her gray eyes didn’t miss much, and when she asked a person how she was doing, Jaylynn knew she wanted to know the answer. So did her students. She was an extremely popular psychology professor and counselor at the University of Washington.
Auntie Lynn came over to see her the day after Jaylynn’s tumultuous arrival, but this was their first time to talk privately without the distractions of Erin and Amanda.
“Are you hungry for lunch yet?” Lynn asked. She led Jaylynn over to the sofa and curled up on one end facing Jaylynn.
“I haven’t been hungry since I got here,” Jaylynn confessed.
“That’s unusual for you, Ye Old Bottomless Pit.”
Jaylynn nodded. “I know—it’s not good, but nothing tastes appetizing at all.”
“I’ll get hungry pretty soon and I’ll make some lunch, but in the meantime, you want something to drink? Juice? Pop? Tea? Lemonade?”
“Orange juice?”
“Sure. Back in a flash.”
Her petite aunt disappeared down the hall into the kitchen, and Jaylynn looked around the apartment living room and dining area. She’d always liked this old-fashioned and roomy apartment. The wide ceiling molding was dark mahogany wood and gleamed in the sunlight streaming through the windows. The walls were pale yellow—pretty much the same color Luella had selected for her back hall. She recalled for a moment that day with Dez, how playful Dez had been, how much fun the three of them had at the movies. Though that day was only a short time earlier, it seemed like forever.
She gazed up at a painting hanging over the wing chairs across the room. It hadn’t been in the apartment when she’d last been to visit. The only way to describe it would be to describe it as a four-by-five foot explosion of colors. At first glance the colorful brush and palette marks gave the impression of great chaotic energy, but upon further inspection, Jaylynn noticed something strange. The whirls and dips of the paint on the canvas contained intricate outlines of faces. After studying the painting for another minute, she was sure she could pick out at least twelve faces, all overlapping and shading into one another.
When her aunt returned to the room with the juice for her and Pepsi for herself, Jaylynn pointed at the artwork. “Where did that come from?”
“A very talented psychology student painted it for me.”
“What’s it called?”
“Psych Five-Thousand, believe it or not. Notice anything interesting about it?”
“The faces?”
“Good, Lynnie! Almost no one ever picks them out. Everybody gets stuck on the color and overlooks the details. How many faces do you see?”
Jaylynn tilted her head to the side and counted. “I for sure see twelve, but somehow I bet there are more.”
“Not bad. The young man, Michael is his name, painted it to represent the liveliness of the fourteen students in the class. There are actually fifteen faces there, me included. Michael’s very talented, very troubled, and brilliant, to complicate matters.”
“It must be nice to teach somebody like that—someone so fascinating.”
“He can be very difficult at times, but I have a soft place in my heart for him.” She set her glass of soda on a blue coaster on the coffee table. “But that’s enough about me. I want to hear about you. I want to know about your partner.”
Startled, Jayly
nn looked at her aunt. “Dez?”
“Yes.”
“She’ll recover just fine, Auntie.”
“I know that. But you and she are not fine.”
Jaylynn smiled at her aunt, a bemused expression on her face. If she didn’t know better, she would have to say her aunt and Sara went to the same mind reader’s school. “We’re better now, thank you.” She hesitated a moment, then went ahead and asked the question that came to mind. “Why would you ask me that particular question first?”
“Because I sensed it was the most important—because of the arc of your letters.”
Jaylynn blushed and looked down. “I wrote about her a lot, didn’t I?”
“Yes. Ever since she disappeared from the narrative a while back, I’ve wanted to know what happened to her.”
Jaylynn sat quietly for a moment, her eyes resting on the vivid painting across the room. She hadn’t come out to her family, hadn’t ever even mentioned a single person she’d dated. Now it didn’t matter who knew anything anymore. She didn’t care one iota. She lifted her eyes to meet the level gray ones across from her, eyes looking at her with a love and affection she could never doubt.
Her aunt said, “Tell me about her.”
Jaylynn held her breath. She’d never been able to resist her aunt’s openness and honesty. Since she’d been a little girl, she could tell her anything. When her father died, Auntie Lynn was who she confessed to, saying with inimitable nine-year-old logic that his death was her fault because she hadn’t kissed him goodbye that morning, preferring instead to sleep in. Her aunt didn’t take long to set her thinking straight and help her to mourn. For every step of Jaylynn’s life, her father’s sister had been there, like a guardian angel, hovering in the background—just in case.
And here she was again, ready to listen and understand.
Jaylynn exhaled and burst into tears.
Scooting down the couch, Auntie Lynn moved over next to her and put her arm around her. “It’s okay, Lynnie.” She grabbed up the box of tissues from the shelf under the coffee table and set them next to her.
